Interview | Craig Ross – “I was more than ready”

Barnet FC goalkeeper Craig Ross made his first team debut last night, stepping in with a little over 30 minutes to go until kick off following an injury in the warm up to Jamie Stephens.

The 27-year-old spoke to barnetfc.com following our narrow 1-0 defeat to Brighton and was unfazed about the late call.

“It’s not a bad place to make your debut! Obviously, there was the unfortunate last minute injury to Jamie but I’m prepared to play any game so I was more than ready to go.”

Ross, formerly of Brighton based non-league side Whitehawk, was happy with the sides performance, especially against top flight opposition.

“We’ve come up against a Premier League team and put a real shift in. All the lads in front of me were so organised, we stuck to the game plan and did what we were meant to do. We were hard to break down.”

The Barnet defence limited Brighton to just four shots on target, conceding once shortly after the restart. However, Ross pulled off an important save in the first half after 2016/17 Championship player of the season Anthony Knockaert raced down on goal.

“Yeah, obviously that’s what I’m there to do, they didn’t have a great amount of efforts on goal and, in truth, we probably had the better chances but we just didn’t take them.

“We weren’t quite clinical enough. It’s frustrating but when you come up against Premier League opposition, they’re going to take any chance they get.”

Ross is confident that if Barnet can carry the performance levels shown in last night’s Carabao Cup defeat throughout the rest of the season, then good results are likely to follow.

“It just shows we can match anyone. There is no reason why we can’t take this sort of performance against a Premier League team into the League 2 season.

“If we can keep the same work rate that we had today into the league, I’m sure we’ll be successful.”